Green space, black holes: Subsidized golf courses costing cities, taxpayers

The Cedar Hills golf course sits at the mouth of American Fork Canyon on 140 acres once littered with rusted beer cans and broken bottles.

For generations, the farmers of Cedar Hills ignored this land. Too dry, they said. Eventually it became a gravel pit, dull, gray and dusty.

But today the land is green, covered by a blanket of clipped grass. It's a hot summer morning, and the course is all but empty. Over on hole 13, an elderly man in tan shorts is about to sink a putt. There is no one in the tee box, waiting for him to get off the green, and no one ahead on the next hole.

Maybe it's the heat. And maybe it's something else.

There's another golf course across the street. And another a few miles down the road. And another up in Draper, and another in Saratoga Springs, and another in Eagle Mountain. Maybe that's where all the golfers are.

The ball drops in the hole. The man fetches it and strolls back to the cart. Off to the next hole.

For a golfer like this, there's nothing wrong with an empty course. It means no waiting for a tee time, which means no one is behind him, rushing his putts. He can walk slowly. He can take his time.

But The Cedars is no country club. To keep it green, it needs to be kept full. Last year, the course lost $223,000. This year it will probably lose $300,000.

That's bad news for the owner of this course.

And who owns this course?

If you live in Cedar Hills, you do.

Not so long ago, there weren't enough golf courses in Utah to satisfy the demand. Getting a weekend tee time required a reservation three or more weeks in advance.

The population — which was booming and growing more affluent — wanted more courses.

Throughout the 1960s, golf's golden era, and extending through the early '90s, just about every city or county in Utah built a course.

They built them in canyons and in the foothills, over landfills and pipe plants, turning ugly land green, from Logan to St. George.

These courses were for the masses, for men and women who couldn't afford to belong to a country club.

Yes, the courses were expensive to build. And yes, in the Utah desert, it was expensive to keep them green. But they were as necessary as swimming pools or tennis courts or museums. Or so the argument went.

Besides, golf would pay for itself, and then some. That's what city council after city council was told, sometimes by developers and sometimes by consultants secretly working for developers. Old courses in Salt Lake City, built as early as 1920, had paid off their debts and were now making money.

"Other cities saw that and started drooling," says Rob Fotheringham, a Cedar Hills councilman.